Quietly Hostile – Samantha Irby

I was lucky enough to pick up Quietly Hostile, Samantha Irby’s latest collection of essays, during a week where I desperately needed a laugh. I knew Irby was good for it, having read Wow, No Thank You. I dove in, looking forward to laugh-crying instead of the other kind.

Irby is all about diffusing the shame of what you like and who you are in the dark when you think no one can see you. In the very first essay in Quietly Hostile, she advises readers to respond to derision with a simple “I like it!”. Not only does it help you affirm your sense of self, it silences (and usually embarrasses) the person who’s trying to shame you for your tastes – each equally important, of course.

Irby – for all her self-deprecation – certainly isn’t shy about telling us what she likes. She happily dedicates a whole essay in Quietly Hostile to her appreciation for the musical works of the terminally-uncool Dave Matthews. In another, she gives the reader a frame-by-frame description of her favourite pornographic film. She waxes rhapsodic about well-stocked bathrooms, high-speed internet, elastic-waist pants, the home shopping network, and getting stoned while watching videos about whales.

In fact, it’s hard to imagine that anything is off-limits to Irby. She tells us things I’d imagine most of us would want to hide from our therapists.

Irby even addresses her role in writing the much-maligned Sex And The City sequel series, And Just Like That. She doesn’t so much give us a behind-the-scenes scoop on the writers room as she does the insane death threats she received as a result of her work on it (the internet is a terrible place). Then, she gives a detailed explanation of how she would “ruin” each episode of the original series if she had written it herself. Yes, you probably need to have re-watched Sex And The City at least a handful of times to truly appreciate this chapter of Quietly Hostile – but I have, and I did.

Above all, my favourite of all the essays in this collection is What If I Died Like Elvis, in which Irby is rushed to hospital in the midst of an anaphylactic allergic reaction. It had me howling with laughter. I went back and re-read it immediately, and quoted all my favourite bits for loved ones. It was just so intensely relatable, I felt like Irby and I might actually be the same person. It turns out we share the impulse to make a joke in any uncomfortable situation, which leads doctors to say things like: “Samantha, you are funny, but you are also in anaphylactic shock. I am trying to clear your airway, please stop joking and tilt your head back,” (page 206).

All in all, Quietly Hostile was exactly what I hoped and needed from Irby. I’d recommend it even to the uninitiated, as it’s a great sample plate of everything that makes her work wonderful fun to read.

Read Quietly Hostile on audiobook via Libro.fm here.

My favourite Amazon reviews of Quietly Hostile:

• “I have suffered enough, I want my life back and so I will never pick up another Samantha Irby book ever again.” – JJLOCK
• “hilarious and somehow relatable even though I am not a black orphan lesbian from Chicago.” – katy
• “If you don’t like this book, that’s okay. You are probably really good at other things.” – BeepBoop